Chapter 10: After the Storm
The rain didn't last forever.
But it felt like it had carved something new into the earth.
The next evening, the streets smelled like wet pavement and forgiveness. Puddles clung to the cracks in the road like memories that hadn't dried yet.
I showed up at the corner a little later than usual.
I wasn't sure if she'd be there.
Part of me still feared waking up to find it all gone — like those nights had been dreams. But she was there.
Under the same streetlamp.
This time, she was waiting with an umbrella in her lap, twirling it with fingers that looked calmer than yesterday.
When she saw me, she smiled.
A small, hesitant smile — but it was real.
"Hey," she said. "You found me again."
---
We walked slowly tonight.
The kind of slow where your feet aren't just carrying you forward — they're feeling the ground beneath them.
Spring looked up at the sky, now clear, stars blinking shyly between clouds.
"I had a good day today," she said.
"That's good," I replied. "What made it good?"
"I woke up… and something felt softer. Like I wasn't trying so hard to remember. Like I was just… allowed to feel what was here."
She glanced at me.
"Like you."
My heart thudded.
She remembered something. Maybe not the moments. But the feeling.
And that was everything.
---
We passed the old tree near the bend in the road — the one where she once told me secrets in a whisper, months ago. She paused there now, running her fingers over the bark.
"Do you think trees remember?" she asked.
"I think they do," I said. "In the rings. In the roots. In the way they lean toward certain voices."
"Then maybe I'm like a tree," she said. "Maybe I've been listening to you all along, even if I don't know it."
I smiled.
She didn't look away.
"I wrote something today," she said. "I don't know why. Just felt like my hands wanted to say something."
She pulled a folded note from her pocket. It was smudged from the rain. She handed it to me.
It read:
"If I forget you, remind me gently. If I forget me, remind me kindly. If I forget both — sit with me anyway."
I read it three times.
Each time felt like a prayer.
"You wrote this?" I whispered.
"I think a part of me did," she said. "The part that still believes in us."
---
At the river, we didn't talk much.
The bench was dry now. The stars were clearer than they'd been in weeks.
She leaned into me. Her head on my shoulder.
I closed my eyes and tried to hold the moment still.
But she spoke.
Soft. Barely audible.
"What happens if one day I stop coming back?"
That broke something in me.
I held her hand tightly.
"Then I'll come find you. Every time. No matter how long it takes. No matter how many versions of you I meet. I'll keep loving all of them."
---
There was silence again.
But it wasn't empty.
It was full of all the things we didn't need to say.
And then she whispered,
"I think I love you."
The words were unsure — not because she didn't feel them, but because she didn't know where they came from.
"I know," I said. "And when you forget, I'll say it back first."
She looked at me.
And kissed me.
Like the storm had never happened.
Like forgetting was just another kind of beginning.
---
Quote from Spring (Chapter 10):
"If I forget you, remind me gently. If I forget me, remind me kindly. If I forget both — sit with me anyway."
Quote from the Protagonist (Chapter 10):
"No matter how many versions of you I meet, I'll keep loving all of them."